WORLD

Taiwan has relaxed rules for Chinese media, long regarded as spy organizations for the Communist government, as relations warm between the two long-time political rivals, officials said on Wednesday.

Chinese President Hu Jintao told a senior North Korean official on Wednesday that ties between the two nations have reached a new level of goodwill, avoiding direct mention of the North's nuclear dispute in his public praise.

Taliban militants killed six U.N. foreign staff in an assault on an international guest-house in Kabul on Wednesday, deepening concerns about security for a presidential election run-off due in 10 days.

A car bomb ripped through a crowded market killing 87 people in Pakistan's city of Peshawar on Wednesday, just hours after Washington's top diplomat arrived pledging a fresh start in sometimes strained relations.

Iran's envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency will present Tehran's position on a draft nuclear fuel deal in Vienna on Thursday, the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.

A healthcare reform bill with a government-run insurance option faced an uncertain future in the Senate on Tuesday, with many centrist Democrats uncommitted and Senator Joe Lieberman strongly opposed.

The German parliament formally elected Angela Merkel to a second term as chancellor on Wednesday, although by a smaller margin than expected, paving the way for her center-right coalition to take office later in the day.

A European Union counter-piracy force arrested seven suspected pirates after a French fishing boat was attacked in the Indian Ocean, it said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama will say on Wednesday there is still too much waste in U.S. defense spending, despite a number of costly projects being terminated in the 2010 defense authorization bill.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday promising a new page in relations and several civilian investment deals.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday, pledging a fresh start in relations with an increasingly embattled and skeptical partner in the struggle against Islamic militancy.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city Comptroller William Thompson sparred in their second and final debate for the city's top office just ahead of the November 3 election.

Radovan Karadzic led a genocidal campaign to make Bosnian Muslims disappear from the face of the earth and carve out a mono-ethnic state for Bosnian Serbs, war crimes prosecutors told a U.N. tribunal on Tuesday.

North Korean efforts to install one of ailing leader Kim Jong-il's sons as a hereditary successor are likely to fail, a senior defector from the communist country said on Tuesday.

The United States and European Union pledged on Tuesday to work to reduce regulatory barriers that impede trade across the Atlantic, but said a free-trade pact was not in the cards right now.

The defense bill President Barack Obama will sign into law on Wednesday contains a new provision that would pay Taliban fighters who renounce the insurgency, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said on Tuesday.

U.S. regulators would be able to peer into the secretive world of hedge funds and private equity funds under a bill passed by a key congressional committee on Tuesday.

A U.N. panel of experts has demanded that Burkina Faso investigate weapons transfers to the rebel-controlled northern part of the neighboring West African state of Ivory Coast.

Somali pirates said on Tuesday they had seized a yacht in the Indian Ocean with a British couple aboard and were taking the vessel to the Horn of Africa nation with a view to demanding a ransom.

A health reform bill with a government-run insurance option faced an uncertain future in the Senate on Tuesday, with many centrist Democrats uncommitted and Senator Joe Lieberman strongly opposed.

Top Democrats in the Senate have reached an agreement to extend the soon-to-expire $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said on Tuesday.

A key U.S. congressional committee will release draft legislation on Tuesday to restrict future bailouts and give the government a new way to deal with giant financial firms that get into trouble, a senior congressional source told Reuters.

A proposal to stop rich Americans from stashing assets offshore to evade taxes, by slapping penalties on individuals and foreign financial institutions, was introduced on Tuesday in the U.S. Congress.

Eight U.S. troops were killed in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday ahead of a run-off presidential election, the NATO-led alliance said, in the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the start of the war eight years ago.

Iran wants major amendments within the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal which it broadly accepts, state media said, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions.

The Obama administration's pay czar, who sent shock waves through Wall Street by slashing compensation at seven bailed-out companies, says those moves were just the beginning.

Much of the rationale for the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has to do with making sure that it doesn't become a haven for militant groups once again.

The foreign ministers of Russia, China and India said on Tuesday that the world must remain engaged in Afghanistan, with Moscow seeking a greater role for regional powers in stabilising the war-torn country.

The European Union agreed on Tuesday to impose an arms embargo on Guinea over the killing of anti-government protesters and said it would restrict the travel and freeze the assets of individuals involved.